Living out of someone else’s house (rented), with the bare minimum of general ‘stuff’ to survive on day to day, in rural Brasil, (and I mean Ru-RAL! we are so much out of the way that we had to make our own kilometer sign so the local delivery trucks can find us!) is fast becoming a lesson in improvisation. Rope is my daily savior. I swear by (and with) silver tape. I can clean, maim or kill with a broom made of piaçava. I can prepare a 3 course meal with one good paring knife and the cheapest and shoddiest of cheese graters ever to leave China. I’m not even gonna talk about the myriad of possibilities a small screwdriver in the hand affords.

This is my ‘kitchen’, complete with churasqueira (BBQ) and fresh running river water. Yes. River water. Guess that old paring knife was sharper than I thought, graça Deus for silver tape!

In a make-do situation, just about anything will do. I am going to have to nail a pad of paper and a pen to Gary; this is how the material requisitions I get from him are looking..

Believe it or not, I can decipher was that little chunk of styrofoam is saying. “12 units of 5/16ths 12meter long iron rods and 15 sacks of 50kg Mizu brand cement” You know, I also speak whale.

And this here, this is two plans and another materials request. See if you can figure out which is which.

You guessed it! The plastic tube has written on it a request for 3 different sizes of more plastic tube.

Last weekend in a panic to avoid a fight with the neighbors dog, I locked Marley and Sombra in our sleeping room by tying a kanga from the outside bathroom door handle across the hallway to the outside bedroom door handle as there was no way to secure it from outside the room. You suddenly become extra inventive when you’re in a rush!

This is where we’re staying…will probably explain a lot about what I’m saying here, use the link if the vid doesn’t work (crap internet here in the hinterlands):